


Come and Rattle Your Chain

by coconutfred



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Panic Attacks, only canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 14:40:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5874478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coconutfred/pseuds/coconutfred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lily Potter sacrificed herself to save her only son.</p><p>It didn't stick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come and Rattle Your Chain

Harry's crying woke Lily up, and for a moment, she was too disoriented to do anything about it. She was sleeping? Except, the last thing she remembered was poking through the pantry while James made lights for Diwali - and then there was a noise and she shouted for him to check on it - probably one of this damn charmed boots again, they kept walking themselves outside and not being able to get back in - except it hadn't been James' boots. It'd been-

"Lily, it's him!"

Lily's eyes shot open and she lurched upright. She immediately vomited, choking and gasping as her head spun and her body ached. Every one of her muscles felt overworked and unreliable. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. She had to- You-Know-Who was there, he'd found them, he'd killed James- Harry-

Harry was still crying.

Lily forced herself to move slowly as she sat up, despite all her instincts screaming at her to run. Harry was on the ground by her hip, face scrunched up angrily and covered - oh God, oh Merlin - covered in blood, but he was crying as loudly as he ever had and he wasn't _dead_ , and neither was she, which didn't- she couldn't-

"Focus," she hissed at herself, and reached out to her son. Her arms didn't feel secure enough to gather him close, but they managed it. "Oh love," she said, "c'mere Harry, come here. What happened? Hush, hush, I'm here-" and she went to wipe the blood and snot from his face, still murmuring quiet nonsense, and realized she was covered in dust. 

Her head had stopped swimming quite so badly. Lily was still careful not to jostle it too much as she peered carefully around the nursery. It had been utterly destroyed, every piece of furniture in pieces and flung about the room. The changing table she and Jame had fought over constructing for nearly the entire pregnancy had gone through the wall and was laying in three pieces in the hallway. 

She and Harry were right in the middle, everything flung away from them as if they were a bomb, which meant-

Well, they were supposed to be dead, and they weren't, and there had been some sort of explosion, so that meant-

She had no idea what that meant.

Lily pulled Harry as tight against her chest as she dared. "Oh sweetheart," she murmured into his hair as he fussed, "what happened to us?"

-

It took Lily a while to stand up. Her legs didn't want to work together to support her weight, and coordination took more concentration than she felt she possessed. If she had put Harry down for a moment, it might have been easier, but she felt less able to do that than detach an arm and leave it to be picked up later. When she finally managed, she stumbled over to the remnants of the changing table. One of the drawers had a pack of still sealed wet clothes she could get at, and she fumbled to get Harry's face cleaned and checked over.

As far as she could tell, his wound had stopped bleeding long before she'd woken up, and he didn't seem pained at all, but she needed to know for sure that he was alright. She couldn't do much else, but she could make sure her son was alright.

Lily wiped his face gently and then bit her lip savagely on a gasp. There on his forehead, looking red and angry but still more healed than it had any right to be, was a thin scar shaped like, of all things, a lightning bolt. Lily reached out and traced it gently with a finger. Harry squirmed when she touched it, and then again when she stopped. He was beginning to scrunch his face up again, in the patented Potter sulk. 

Lily had to bite her lip again, remembering the same expression on James' face a thousand times before, holding onto a sulk before dissolving into laughter moments later, sulking over something ridiculous to cover being scared and worried all these past months holed up alone and getting news every day about another lost friend or relative- 

Harry squirmed more intently, trying to escape the grasp of her arms, and Lily brought herself sharply back to the present. She had to focus. James was- James was dead (Merlin, God, Christ- but if he wasn't dead, he would've come to check on them and he hadn't, she hadn't so much as heard a sound from outside the two of them since the high pitched, horrible laughter- ) but Harry _wasn't_ dead. Harry wasn't dead, and Lily wasn't dead, and if she wanted to keep it that way, she had to focus.

First thing: get her wand.

Second thing: get out of the house. Maybe set it on fire on her way out. She never wanted to see it again; every moment she stood here in the home she'd been trying to build, where she'd been so happy and now was so empty, she wanted to be sick again. 

Maybe that was her head rebelling against her again.

Focus.

She wasn't sure if the Fidelius had fallen or not, but even if it was still functional, who knew how many people had been told of their location. Who knew how many people had heard Peter give them up, and what did that even mean? Was Peter dead as well, tortured for information and then discarded like garbage?

Lily shuddered helplessly, thinking about Peter's kind smile and steady hands. Who else? How had they found Peter in the first place, was Sirius dead? Remus? The whole Order? How many of their friends had fallen while she and James bickered over decorations and made dinner?

"Focus," she snapped out loud, startling Harry out of his continuing bid for freedom. He stared at her wide-eyed, and Lily bounced him on her hip quickly, cooing wordlessly before he decided to throw a tantrum.

"We've got to be really quiet now, alright love? Sneaky sneaky, just like when we're trying to surprise your Papa," Lily told him as she crept down the hallway and peered out into the dark house. Her wand was... in the living room? No- the kitchen. She'd put it down to do dishes, and it should still be there by the sink, safe and useless until she got to it.

With a deep breath, Lily darted out of the hallway and moved as quickly as she dared toward the other end of the house. Everything was dark except the orbs of light James had been making, still bobbing calmly by the living room couch and casting shadows around the ruined space. Even here, she could see evidence of what had gone on in the nursery. Pictures were knocked over and broken, and the furniture has been pushed out of place. Off towards the front door, Lily could see huge, scorched gouges in the wall. She recognized the signs of James' favorite blasting spell, undoubtedly knocked off its original course unless James had taken sudden exception to the ceiling, and if she looked closer she could see the shadow of his hair and-

She couldn't look closer, not and stay upright and moving and relatively focused. James wouldn't care about the state of his- about the state he'd been left in. He'd want Lily and Harry to get out safely, no matter what that meant for him.

Lily ducked into the kitchen and snatched her wand off the counter gratefully, vowing silently to never let it out of her sight again. If she had to sew the goddamn thing to her palm, she'd do that and without a single regret-

The sharp crack of apparition sounded from somewhere outside, and Lily flung herself to her knees, out of the sight of the kitchen window. It couldn't be the Order, could it? She hadn't had time to send out a distress signal. She skittered nervously to press near the stove and listened as footsteps ran up the walk. 

The door was slammed open with enough force to rebound loudly off the wall, and the footsteps continued in and up the stairs to the first floor without pause. It was definitely no one they knew, Lily thought. No one they knew could've passed by James without so much as pausing. It was just as unlikely to be a random passerby, so- a death eater?

Lily shifted Harry behind her and Silenced him, then readied herself to attack.

The intruder paused. She could see the tip of their shadow from around the kitchen wall. If they decided to come this way, she'd fire around the corner immediately - no room for chance or subtlety. She might even curse them now- except then the shadow disappeared. The person, picking their steps more carefully now, walked towards the source of the wreckage.

While the person was making their own noise, Lily crept forward. She hoped that the sight of the nursery would distract them enough that she could duck around and aim- if it was a death eater wondering why their boss hadn't come back to celebrate the murder of a helpless infant, then surely they'd be fairly focused-

As soon as she had eyes on the figure, she cast a blasting curse. As the spell rocketed down the hallway, the sparks illuminated the extremely startled face of one Severus Snape, and then it hit him squarely in the center of mass. He was lifted off his feet and flung back into what had been Lily and James' bedroom. The only thing she could focus properly on was the strange glisten of moisture on his cheeks as he flew back, and then he crashed into the opposite wall and slumped behind the bed, and she couldn't see anything.

Lily stood very still. Severus- they weren't friends anymore. They hadn't been friends for- Merlin, for years. They weren't even on the same side of the war. He'd known where the house was, so surely You-Know-Who had told him, surely he was a death eater.

Perhaps he hadn't been here for Lily at all. Perhaps she'd been right, and he'd been looking for You-Know Who. Perhaps he'd been- what, crying for You-Know-Who? That didn't make sense, but neither did the idea that he'd come to look for her-

Harry bumped into the back of her leg, startling her so badly that she nearly sent another blasting curse down the hallway. He grabbed for her leg and used it to pull himself up onto unsteady legs, babbling silently to himself. He offered her a grin, and Lily returned it shakily.

"I have to focus on you," she told him, quietly. "Severus is an adult. He can- he'll be fine. If we're not stopping for your Papa, we're not stopping for anything." She lifted him back to her hip, readjusted her grip on her wand, and headed for the back garden. There was a shed crammed up against the house, crammed with overly ambitious garden projects and some overflow storage, and James' broomstick, and a bag packed with some emergency clothes and his Invisibility Cloak.

She couldn't apparate with Harry, and the Floo network wasn't secure, even if she had thought her head was steady enough to manage it. Broomsticks couldn't be easily tracked, though, no matter how much she disliked flying them herself. She could manage well enough in a pinch, and if she could get somewhere safe, they could figure out some other means of transportation there.

Which just left deciding on somewhere safe to go.

"Remus first?" she asked Harry, juggling him, the broomstick and the Invisibility Cloak. If they'd found Peter, she figured, they must have found Sirius. Besides flying straight to Hogwarts, 'with Remus' was the safest place she could be.

It was a plan. Haphazard, panicked, with only one step, but it was a plan.

"Let's go see Uncle Moony, huh, baby? Uncle Moony?"

Harry clapped his hands happily - and still silently, oops - and Lily kicked the shed closed decisively.

"Uncle Moony," she said again. "He'll know what to do next."

-

It took five hours to fly to Remus' current flat. The last time she'd visited, still six months pregnant, James had done the trip in three and a half with her sitting in front of him and complaining about nausea the whole time.

Still, she'd been a lot less wiggly than Harry was in his perch in front of her, and they hadn't had to worry about the Invisibility Cloak flying off and falling onto the freeway below to terrify some Muggles. By the time Lily touched down in the alley behind Remus' building, Harry was asleep and curled into her stomach, and Lily herself felt about two wrong moves away from collapsing to the pavement, never to stand back up. Whatever had happened in the nursery, her muscles _really_ hadn't appreciated it.

Lily grimaced as she let the broomstick fall ungracefully to the ground. She didn't have the coordination to pick it up and keep her son sleeping quietly, so she'd just have to remember to come back out for it. She picked her way around the bits of rubbish in the alley and stepped out onto the sidewalk facing the flats. Moving carefully so that the cloak didn't swish revealingly about her feet, Lily made her way up the stairs to the complex and across to Remus' door.

She knocked quickly and as loudly as she dared.

There was no response.

Lily turned to check the sky behind her - there was no sight of the sun yet, but it was starting to look a bit brighter around the horizon. She had no idea what time it was, but surely it was early enough to wake up and answer the door in a crisis.

She knocked louder, and said "Remus, open up," as loudly as she dared. 

Still nothing.

Frustrated, Lily moved along the wall to about where she remembered the bedroom to be and began knocking on the wall there.

There was nothing but silence and darkness from inside.

Lily wanted to start yelling, but Harry was still sleeping, and she didn't know how safe it was, and her arms ached from holding Harry, and her legs ached from flying, and she was exhausted and confused and everything about being here reminded her of that last trip with James. She looked at the door and remember him picking the lock cheerfully while Remus laughed at him from inside. She looked at the banister along the walkway and remembered sitting here with him and Remus and eating take away and laughing at stupid stories. She looked at her son and remembered all the hopes she had back then, the fairytale she had written in her head of having Harry and raising him with James and growing old and happy and living a life full of laughter and stupid stories, and she wasn't going to get any of that. Not with James, or with Peter, or Sirius, and maybe not with Remus either. 

Maybe the reason he wasn't answering the door was because he was dead and she really was alone. Maybe the only person left alive who cared at all about her was Severus Snape, whom she'd left cursed and unconscious in the ruins of her house, and maybe he hadn't even been there for her after all, maybe he didn't actually give two shits about where Lily Potter was or whether she was about to start bawling on the walkway outside her possibly-dead friend's flat.

"Focus," she whispered to herself, but she couldn't think of what to focus _on_. This had been the entirety of the plan, and she didn't have the resources to come up with a new plan. She was too hurt, inside and outside, and all she could think about was how much she wanted to put Harry down somewhere safe so that she could cry. Or sleep. Or both.

Gritting her teeth, she cast a deafening spell on Harry - the second spell in a single night, and you weren't supposed to do magic on babies while their own magic was still developing, but this was a crisis - and she pounded her fist on Remus' wall.

"Remus Johnathon Lupin," Lily yelled, and her voice came out high and cracked and angrier than she meant, "Merlin help you if you don't answer this door! I _need_ you, and Harry needs you, and damn it all you had better not actually be dead or else I'll-"

The light flicked on suddenly in his flat and she heard Remus curse twice before footsteps rushed to the door. Gasping for breath she couldn't manage to get, Lily grabbed a random handful of the cloak and yanked until it came off and puddled on the ground. Remus' front door swung out and Remus swung out with it, wand up and ready. His hair was sticking up awkwardly and he had creases all along his face. He looked most of the way to a panic and he was halfway through saying her name when Lily flung herself at him. Alive, alive, he was alive, Christ. She never thought she'd be so happy to see someone half-asleep and brandishing a wand at her.

Remus closed one arm reflexively around her, wand still held aloft in the other, and Harry abruptly startled awake at being crushed against two chests instead of just the one. She could feel him fight the embrace, mouth wide and silently crying, but she couldn't focus on that. This was officially it, the moment Lily Potter handed off the reins and checked out.

Remus was talking.

"Lily? Lily, what's going on? Is that the Cloak? You have Harry, are you hurt? Is Harry hurt? What happened- you didn't apparate here, did you? Where's James?"

Lily took several very fast breaths and managed to say, "Inside. We have to get- not safe-"

Remus pulled and she stumbled, and somehow, Lily found herself sitting on a thin mattress with mussed up sheets, watching Remus try to lull Harry back to sleep with a long winded explanation of how he had to file his taxes, but it was a pain, because he kept getting hired by places that didn't believe in decent bookkeeping, and anyway, wizarding taxes were completely unreasonable-

Lily wasn't entirely sure how long she'd been sitting there, but judging by how Remus kept peering anxiously over her during his monologue, the answer was, "long enough to really scare him."

She shivered.

"D'you have tea?" she asked him, and Remus startled a little, even though he'd been watching her when she said it.

"Through there," he said, in the same 'please, please be a good baby and go back to sleep' voice he'd been using, and jerked his head at the bedroom door.

Lily got up, walked through into the kitchen, and made some tea.

After another long while, Remus followed her. He left Harry behind in the bedroom, either asleep or pretending to be to get away from wizard tax law. He came to stand next to where she was leaning against his counter.

Lily handed him a mug.

As he took it, he asked, very quiet like he knew the answer, "Where's James?"

Lily's breath shuddered out of her, and she took a long drink before she could say, "He died. You-Know-Who found us and- he's gone. I had to leave him at the house. I couldn't- there was nothing- I had to leave him."

Remus closed his eyes to absorb this, looking just as injured as she felt. He took a long drink of his own.

"Are you hurt?"

"No," she shook herself firmly. "Harry and I, we're both fine. I don't know how, but we're both fine."

"His head-"

"I know. I don't know what happened. It just- one second, I was begging You-Know-Who to leave Harry alone. The next, I was waking up on the floor. Harry's face was bloody at first, but when I got it off, he'd already healed."

Remus frowned. "Did-" he started hesitantly, "You-Know-Who, he didn't...listen, did he? I mean-" and here, he put the mug onto the counter and started pacing, "-what, he finds you, kills James," he swallowed hard, "knocks you out, scars Harry's forehead, destroys the place and then leaves? Surely not."

Lily shrugged, and then frowned. "No," she said, slowly, working through the memories. "He was going to kill me. I heard him say the killing curse, before everything went dark. He tried to kill me. It just- it didn't work? Or it worked, but then I came back?"

"That's impossible," Remus said, matter-of-fact. "That can't be what happened."

"I said that I don't know what happened," Lily snapped. "I'm just telling you what I remember."

They both fell quiet. Lily swirled the last bit of tea in her cup, trying not to think about anything at all. She could feel Remus watching her, and she didn't feel ready for whatever he was going to say or do next. All her tired and hurt hadn't gone anywhere, just muted for a little bit. They were coming back. 

She didn't want to be awake when they did, but all there was to do was wait for Remus to say whatever he was going to say.

She heard him sigh and take a step forward.

"Can I hug you?" he asked, and she looked up at him, startled.

As long as she'd known him, Remus had always looked varying degrees of tired, but now he looked more exhausted than she'd ever seen him. Lily nodded quickly and opened her arms, and when he stepped into them, she thought of nothing but the feeling of his sleep shirt under her chin, the lingering warmth of the mug in her hand, the chill of the counter at her back. There was nothing but this in the whole world, and she could deal, as long as it stayed that way.

Remus said, muffled into her shoulder, "I'm glad you didn't stay dead."

Lily laughed once, and then she was sobbing. "James," she said. "God. God."

Remus squeezed her tighter. "Yeah," he said, and then he was crying too.

In a while, Lily will step out of the hug and go check on her son. She'll go to sleep, and wake back up. She'll figure out what really happened to the rest of her friends, and what happened to You-Know-Who, and she'll decide where to go from here. She'll go back to the house for James' body. She'll focus on living.

Right now, she and Remus hold each other, and they cry, and she doesn't think about the future at all.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write another story where James and Lily both come back from the dead, but like...thirteen years later. Can you imagine James Potter waking up in the thirteen-year-old ruin of his house, going "dude, what the fuck happened" and being told Harry's fourteen and has been living with the Dursleys on holidays, and Sirius is a convicted felon on the run, and oh by the way, Harry has been mysteriously entered into the Death Olympics and everyone is totally fine with that for some reason?
> 
> But I didn't write that story. I wrote this one instead. You're welcome.


End file.
